http://www.daytop.org/yngadult-serv.html#outOutreach centers provide the same clinical programs as our residential centers, on a less intensive basis. In addition to group and individual counseling sessions, Treatment services include Family Therapy, Art Feelings Workshops, a music program, young women’s programs, and other supportive services. These are included in a client’s treatment plan if they are indicated from the individual’s assessment. (Italics added for emphasis.)
The DAYTOP being presented here, and the DAYTOP I remember from Dallas in 1992 bear little resemblance to one another.
There's nothing in here about The Chair, about humiliating L.E.s, signs, props, Encounter Groups, Haircuts, none of that stuff. And I do not recall ever having my "treatment plan" described to me either. My treatment plan, as I remember it, seemed to be something along the lines of, "You're such a phony. Try to act normal, and don't use too many big words."
There one one social worker on site (early on her name was Joyce Ratner, and after Joyce left the next one was named Susan Merlin) and a psychiatrist who was there on an infrequent basis (his name was Dr. Croix). I myself never went to school in DAYTOP, as I had my GED, so I cannot say anything about what the schooling there was like at the time. While most of the others were in school, I sat at the desk and answered the phone a lot in the morning, and I remember that on most days group was in the afternoon.
http://www.daytop.org/about.html#quaOur clinical staff are required to maintain current licenses and accreditations, and counselors have or are preparing for CASAC certification. This is the Certified Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor credential, a 350 hour course required by the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services.In fairness, I do not know what the exact educational requirements for the DAYTOP "counseling" staff in TX in the late eighties and nineties would have been, and I am sure that the staff there had at least some kind of minimum state accreditation/certification. But I can tell all of you for a certainty that none of the counselors had a degree of any sort, and most had had no or very little college, for that matter. Very little real training other than being program grads themselves, most of them. I remember it as being a fairly "loose" operation back then.
Actually, I remember that when I first went on Second Stage, I was living in an apartment with another Second Stager and was in classes at nearby Richland Community College. One day, I was at the Richardson facility and I recall that Marcy and another female counselor asked me if I'd bring them a couple of class schedules, as they were thinking of signing up for some courses in counseling and psychology. Here we are, and my counselors (both DAYTOP grads from NYC) are asking me to bring them the materials so that they could get into college too. This did not strike me as odd at the time, but in retrospect the thought really pains me.
I have to give the organization the benefit of the doubt in recognizing that I know little about how DAYTOP does things in 2010, other than what I read from their website. And, I admit that I have had very little direct contact with them since 1994, at the Dresser Building. Maybe they do have higher educational requirements for their counseling staff nowadays, and that would at least be a good thing. Maybe they would be more careful to look out for kids with developmental and other neurological disorders these days, and would refer such kids appropriately to a specialist, upon recognition that such a referral might be necessary. This also would be a good thing.
Their website offers a couple of scatter-plot charts as some kind of supposed evidence that their treatment modality is "working," in the sense of reducing their clients' cravings for their respective drugs of choice. There is an email address to which one can write and request more detailed statistical information, supposedly demonstrating the efficacy of the DAYTOP program. They didn't have this as a part of the old website. On the newer DAYTOP site, as well, it is stated that "young adult clients" are considered as those ages 12 to 21. I myself was 18 when I went into DAYTOP, and I was the oldest kid in the house all the way through.
Regardless, the fact remains that DAYTOP applies (and for years has been applying) coercive thought-reform techniques to children as young as twelve years of age, teaching them a philosophy that undermines their identity and blurs their boundaries and teaches them powerlessness and fear, or else cynicism and a knowledge of how to better manipulate others.
In my opinion, DAYTOP members (outpatient or residential) live under constant fear and are scared to death. DAYTOP instills intense fear in its "clients." At least, it did back when I was part of it. Fear holds them in the group, and fear is what motivates a lot of the kids to gradually internalize the DAYTOPian philosophy and frame of mind, until it is actually accepted as being true, and real. Or else, fear is what motivates them to at least "Act As If" their whole way through the program, which (again, in my opinion) is really, at least in the longer run, more of a corrupting and destructive than an edifying influence.
Maybe DAYTOP has actually changed in some respects, but I'd regardless wager that it's still essentially the same abusive thought-reform program that it has been for years.